Evil
by maroongrad
Summary: NOT the same timeline as the other stories. Abraham leaves Alucard in the care of the other researchers, and they torture him until he attempts to escape. Pretty dark, be warned! Oneshot for now.
1. Chapter 1

Warning: this is dark. Really dark. And it was inspired by watching the little girl hiding on Aliens. I may delete it later, it really isn't my style...but it was stuck in my head and wouldn't go away. And so here it is.

Evil

Everything hurt. He curled closer, pressed into the comforting cold of the walls of his cell, and shook with the pain. Silver, they'd used silver again, too much and too soon, and he wasn't healing. The blood was no longer flowing from him with the same speed; it oozed out slowly from the incisions. Not because he was healing, no, but because he simply had no more blood left. He would have whimpered, moaned, voiced his agony, but he no longer had any voice to cry out with. One of the first things they'd done to him was to crush his throat to silence him.

They'd taken samples of each organ, with him screaming on the table as they did so, then while he was helpless with the agony, hauled him back to his cell, day, after day, after day. He'd hated Abraham, the man was cold, callous, but...not this cruel. He'd suffered under that bastard's control, but Abraham had at least had the decency to shoot a silver bullet into his head before operating, leaving him unconcious, had fed him at least a meager meal so that he would recover.

The doctors he'd hired hadn't wasted the silver, simply strapped him down and began their studies. He knew Abraham had given them specific directions on how to sedate his vampire, how to minimize the damage, how to feed it. And before he'd left the country on a week's worth of business, he'd given the vampire specific directions, too. No fighting back, no resisting, obey them as he would obey Abraham.

He couldn't disobey. But they could. And this was the third day of torture. He thought it had only been three days, but was near delirious from the pain. Oh, he'd thought Abraham had been terrible, had been physically miserable and mentally scarred...but this? And to think that he'd been relieved that Abraham would be gone, had anticipated a week of respite and recuperation. He might have been able to last for a week of this, but with what was left of his mind, he doubted it. He'd go mad from the agony, the unceasing, incredible pain.

And as they left him weeping silently on the stone floor, he'd heard the men talking. Master was delayed. It would be another week, perhaps two, before he returned.

Alucard wouldn't make it that long. He might be very difficult to destroy, but the starvation, the silver, the lack of a coffin and earth, the length of time, and the sheer extent of his injuries...he would die. Permanently. And "he", his mind, would die before his body.

He refused to die, refused to give up. The pain, he was powerless against it, could not help but to scream. And he despaired, not seeing any way out of his situation, but he would find a way, somehow, some overlooked possibility, some loophole Abraham had not closed. He'd chosen this corner, hauled his tattered and bloody body to it, for two reasons. It was away from the door, the distance illogically reassuring...and there was a small crevice in the wall. And it smelled of rat.

Only once before, when he was a newly-turned vampire, not yet aware of his abilities, nowhere near his current strength...only that one time had he ever been forced to drink animal blood. It was bitter, giving only a trace amount of strength, nearly useless...but better than nothing. And Abraham, damn the man, had fed him nothing but animal blood in the two months since his capture. And for the last three days, not even his meager cup of pig's blood had been available.

He would eat a rat, if only one would show. The time crept by, the incisions in his skin closing though the damage underneath remained. No more blood was being lost, but he had to replace it, and soon. And the smell of the blood drew the rat into the room. Cautious, sniffing carefully, it ignored his motionless form...and then the bony hand with the yellowed, cracked nails wrapped around it.

A bare mouthful of blood, horrible and disgusting...but all that he had. The entrails, he dropped in front of the hole, the carcass left beside him. The bounty of blood and fresh meat drew another rat in short order. So little, so very little...but he could feel himself healing. He watched the crevice, what was left of his mind wholely focused on the blood, the food, the hope for another rat. A third one! Yes!

Soundless whimpers from his mangled throat as he fought to swallow the bit of blood past the swollen tissues, rat twisting violently in his hands before dying. Three, three rats, a feast for the starving! But no more showed, no more grey noses sniffing cautiously at the air, and he lost his focus on the dark crack they had emerged from to realize that he must begin to plan an escape.

A warning chill, not pain, but a reminder, told him that he must not escape. Abraham forbid it. No escape attempts. He could not control his torturers, grip their minds in his and prevent them from abusing him. Abraham had seen to that, too. Could not bite them, could not even struggle against them, was forbidden from breaking free of his restraints. Could not even growl or hiss at them, unable to show any resistance at all beyond weak thrashing once restrained.

Despair...then...he could not escape. But could he hide? No chill, no warning...he could hide away.

Hide. Hah. Hide where? The basement was not endless, and he was far too weak to move far at all. At least they hadn't bothered to chain him to the wall, though Abraham had told them to. For the last two nights, they'd dropped him in the cell, to find he had barely moved through the night. So incapacitated, they hadn't bothered to restrain him. Locking him into the chains was more effort than they wished to put forth, for the locks were stiff and unlocking him was difficult and a nuisance.

Had they been equally complacent about his door? So convinced of his helplessness that they had simply dropped him and left?

With the blood of the rats, he had the energy to crawl to the door, though each movement made him feel as though he was being impaled. All those torn and sliced bits inside him screamed with the motion, but he ignored them. A few hours ago, he'd been in far more pain. And far too soon, they'd have returned, and he'd be mindless with agony. That knowledge gave him the ability to ignore the rending pain, and he crawled to the door...and found that it pulled open with surprising ease.

They had not locked it. He had a chance. He was also leaving a blood trail, though reduced...they could follow the red smears to him. Despair rose in him, but he fought it off. There was already a dried smeared swath on the floor, left by his body on the trips to his cell on the last three nights. They began in the dissection room, and he shuddered at the thought, panicking at the idea of returning there. But he had to, going anywhere else would leave a trail. And they would find him, and it would continue.

They would not do this to him again. He WOULD thwart them.

Slowly and painfully, he pulled his wrecked body down the hallway, laying yet another layer of blood on the floor, indistinguishable from those already there.

It was a room of horrors. Trays of sharp silver objects, a drain on the floor clogged with his own dried blood, cabinets with shelves covered with tiny, precisely-labeled jars holding...holding...bits...of himself. If he thought about what he was doing, he would not be able to, and so he crawled in the room. His legs were nearly useless now, but he could pull himself along with his arms and did so, his legs reduced to the occasional weak shove.

Could he hide here? Anywhere else...and he'd leave a trail behind. An obvious trail.

No, not really. The cabinets were small, not deep enough to hide him behind their doors. The deep cabinet against the back wall? No doors. He wept in frustration, the room too obviously bare, useless, and rolled on his back to stare blindly up at the ceiling.

And the vent.

Vent. This house had a modern furnace, and his mind pieced together scraps of memory, of floor vents, of great metal ducts traveling the corridor ceilings in the basement. One of those ducts entered this room, running along the ceiling, and it had a vent. That vent...he could reach it without having to do more than kneel on the table. The table was tall, the vent low enough to reach...yes.

If he could get into the vent, he could hide. The opening was so small, but he was so starved...before Abraham left, he would never have fit. Now? Perhaps. And it was above the table, too. With the blood smeared about the room, they might not notice the extra, not realize where he had gone...he might have a few more hours of grace before they found him.

If he could get in there...if. And then they'd have to somehow pry him out. Yes. He would try.

With no energy to waste, he didn't move for a few moments, simply watching the vent, observing, thinking. It had two screws holding it in place. There were no screwdrivers, none that he'd seen...but the flat end of a scalpel might well work. The screws were large, after all. He thought he could remove them, remove the cover from the vent. The difficulty...would be in pulling himself up and into that vent. It would be agony.

But he'd be in worse agony when they returned. His brief rest on the floor over, he crawled to the table, using it to pull himself upright.

Scalpels, yes a tray of them. They wouldn't miss one, not with so many. He was glad of his crushed throat as he pulled himself onto the table. The screams, he could not help but scream, it hurt too bad, the edge of the table pressing against his stomach, the dissected organs tearing and pulling inside, but his throat changed the screams into hoarse, barely-audible gasps. And he made it, kneeling on the table, scalpel in hand. One screw was easy to remove. The second, he only loosened, letting the grate pivot on it and leave the vent open. It waited, a dark, silent rectangle, surrounded by shining steel.

He'd bleed on that, they would see the blood around the vent, they would find him. He'd have to clean it off. How? Ah, there. Rags, there were rags on the trays with the instruments, bits of cotton used to soak up his blood during surgeries, keeping the organs visible. He placed a few of the cotton cloths and the scalpel in the vent, pushed to the side out of the way...gritted his teeth...and before he could think of what he was doing, pulled himself into the vent.

Agony, blind agony. Only a will of steel kept him moving, and he pulled himself up, twisting and turning, pulling his body into the metal duct. The weight of a man should have pulled it loose from the wall, but he was a vampire, and starved, weighing a fraction of what his healthy weight would be, and the brackets supporting the duct held easily. Safe inside, he rested, waiting for the waves of pain to cease crashing over his mind.

He'd pushed the scalple, screw, and cloths in front of him as he entered, but the bloody grate hung open behind him. He had to clean it, close it...and that meant moving backwards. Palms braced against the sides and floor of the duct, he wriggled and contorted, sliding backwards a few inches at a time, pulling his tools with him. The vent and grate were wiped clean, no sign of his entry. The grate was rotated back in place, his fingers reaching through the grid to replace the missing screw. It twisted easily, even with his warped and broken fingers, and within minutes there was no external evidence that he'd gone into the duct. The screws were loose, but unless someone actually tried to remove them, they seemed untouched. And who would think that a full-sized vampire could have gotten into that little vent?

They might.

It was time to move on. Clenching the scalpel in his teeth, he pulled himself through the vent, inch by painful inch.

The night drug past him, as he traveled through the ducts of the basement. The one from the surgery joined a large one in the corridor, and he was able to rise to his knees and crawl down it. His legs buckled every few feet, but his iron will forced him on. He would NOT be their plaything again. He WOULD hide. He WOULD...not escape...no...but...be missing. Absent. Gone, as long as he possibly could be gone.

The basement duct had vertical shafts that reached up into the house, large, wide ducts...too wide. He began to worry, wondering if he'd be able to leave the basement at all. But the ducts decreased in size as he moved farther from the furnace, and he lay on his back, gazing up into a dark shaft, preparing to climb into it. Narrow, narrow enough that he could brace himself against the walls. And he did, pulling himself up, inch by inch, leaning his body against them to brace himself in place, sometimes sliding down a few hard-earned inches, but using the tight confines to force himself ever upwards.

Horizontal shafts came off at intervals, passing under floors. Under the main floor, the next floor...the next...Hours passed as he crept upwards. He was exhausted, having burned through any remaining reserves, desperation and determination alone keeping him in motion. Forty vertical feet he traveled, each horizontal shaft a chance to pause, to tuck his feet into and fold down, resting, the confines too tight for him to fall. And then the duct ended.

The end was a T shape, and he looked dully down the tiny shafts. These were for the attic, meant simply to keep it a few degrees above freezing in the winter, and small, so small. He might be able to fit, though...a child would struggle, but he was so thin, barely more than a skeleton. It was worth a try.

The difficulty was in his legs. The confines were so tight, had the legs been an fingers-width longer, or the vertical shaft a hair narrower, he could never have angled them in. If he'd needed to breathe, he would never have fit in the shaft. Hips twisted, shoulders twisted, arms stretch above him, he barely, barely fit. And he could not move.

No, he WOULD move. A fraction of an inch at a time, twist this shoulder, turn his hips so, brace his toes, shove forward with his feet, barely, barely moving. But moving. And by dawn, he was entirely in the attic duct. Not even his feet remained in the vertical shaft, and it would require dismantling the duct to pry him out.

One last thing. If Abraham called him, he would have to respond. He had no choice in it, his obedience was forced. And Abraham would try to find him. In fact, when his torturers demanded that he come to them, he would have to come. And he might be able to back out of this duct, fall down the shaft, be found.

And so he had the scalpel. Difficult in these tight confines, but not impossible...and he slashed at his arms, destroying the blood vessels in them. He was already almost too weak to move, and the blood welled slowly out. It spread across the surface of the duct, soaking his hair, oozing away from him. And with the last of his blood, the last of his strength left him, eyes closing.

It was dark, and silent. He was in agony, agony of his wounds, agony of starvation. He would not heal, not without blood, his coffin, his soil. He had none of those. He had condemned himself to a slow death from starvation; he no longer had any way to reveal his presence, and he had hidden his corpse away where it would never be found.

No, he could not escape, could not fight back. But they would never touch him again, never hurt him again.

He spent the day fading in and out of conciousness, in too much pain, his insides clenched from starvation. At sunset, he woke briefly, biting and sucking at his own arm in desperation of blood, his body's final, desperate attempt to feed, instinctive and mindless. Below him, dim and faint even to his vampiric ears, he could hear the angry shouts, the demands that he show himself.

His inability to obey repaid him with a warning chill, then agony along his entire frame, the pain unending and rending.

But still better than what he would have experienced had he remained. The same pain, as he fought to escape...and the torture of new injuries, as silver burned and cold fingers probed and his body was picked over by the carrion crows of doctors. They'd planned to take an eye today, had discussed their next planned actions in front of him, delighting in his mute terror, his fear and dread and anticipation.

Knowing this almost made the pain bearable. It would never end, not until he obeyed and returned to them, and he could not.

But he had deprived them of their toy, their plaything, and they would never touch him again, though it would be months before he finally returned to dust.

He wondered idly if he'd ever be found. It was the last coherent thought he would have. 


	2. Van Helsing's Return

-I had a request to continue this, and did.-

Abraham was beyond furious when he returned, and the red welt on the side of one of the men's faces demonstrated the level of rage.

"Missing? MISSING? And only a few days after I left? And none of you thought to tell me this?" He radiated anger and rage, fists clenched, and the men he had left in charge of the vampire flinched away. "And HOW, may I ask, did he undo his chains and unlock his door? They have held him for months, even when he was far stronger. I left him with you, half-starved, weakened, and obedient, and you could not even keep him CONTAINED?" His voice had risen to a thundering shout.

Abraham turned his back to them, bringing himself under control. The greatest prize of Man in centuries, and it was GONE. Months of tracking and hunting, the deaths of Lucy and Quincy, the stress of restraining and binding the beast to his will, all of it wasted due to their incompetence. He shook with rage, and the heat of his anger was consumed and replaced by a chill fury, cold and calculating.

No one who knew the jovial, good-natured doctor would have recognized the expressionless, cold face that he turned towards the men.

"Explain yourselves."

Their lies fell apart on them. Abraham had left them to find the cook, who was responsible for draining off blood from the meats each day. He had never bothered to tell her why he needed them, simply instructing her and expecting his instructions to be carried out. Yes, she had set the cup of blood aside each afternoon as required.

"But they didn't take it, sir. The men as you said would take the blood, they poured it down the drain." Hands knotted and unknotted in her apron, eyes wide with fear that she'd lose her position, desperate to show that she'd done as required. "There, that drain." A thin, veined hand darted from the safety of her apron folds to point to a small sink in the corner.

"They never took the blood? Not once?" Eyes narrowed, his mind turned over what that implied.

"No, not once, I'm certain of it. Every day, I made sure it was there. A full cup, no less, pig's blood, beef blood, lamb and chicken a few times, too. But always, sir, always." Her wide eyes in her old lined face beseeched him, and he found himself believing her her innocence. No, she was not culpable in this fiasco. Forcing his face to relax, he patted her shoulder reassuringly.

"You did exactly as you should, thank you. I'll be leaving now so you can continue with your work." He forced a slight smile onto his face to reassure her. "I'll admit I've missed your cooking while gone, and look forward to dinner." He didn't miss the slight sigh of relief. "We won't be needing any more blood for some time. I expect that will change, but not for some time." Not until he either recovered Dracula or found another vampire. Damn those men, any other vampire he found would be a far less valuable specimen.

Next, he went to the scullery maid. It was her job to clean the basement hallways and refill the lamps. She was never to enter the labs or the vampire's cell, but checked the rat traps in that hallway on a daily basis. A halfwit, yes...but from her complaints, he learned about the great bloody mess the men had left in the hallway. He fought the fury from his face, not wanting to frighten the dim creature. There was no cause for the vampire to bleed so much. Feeding him after working on him allowed his injuries to seal, and as often as not Abraham forced him to walk to his cell under his own power.

And he also learned that the padlock had been left off the door, for she'd tripped over it in the dim light the day after he'd left. With a grateful smile and a reassuring pat, he left her to continue her work, though the smile vanished as soon as his back was to her.

Those fools. He'd left them simple instructions. Enter the cell, use a silver bullet to knock the vampire out. Place him on the table quickly, strap him down tightly, remove the indicated organs and tissues, make the specified measurements. He'd scheduled the research closely, not wanting the vampire to wake during the procedures. Within the hour, they'd finish. While they cleaned the work area, labeled their samples, and compared notes, Dracula would wake. They were to feed him the blood the cook had provided. Then, return him to the cell, chain him, and padlock the door.

They had neither fed him nor padlocked the door. He suspected the fools had not even chained the beast. Had they followed his orders at all? Rage burning in him again, he strode down the stairs to the lab where the men waited.

"There are no bullets missing." He snapped the cylinder back into the gun, having confirmed that all six bullets were still there. The box of bullets was full as well. He'd left a full month of bullets, and not a single one had been used. Ignoring their protests, he strode to the cabinets.

They'd have the vampire for three days, and there should be nearly twenty samples, collected from various muscles and joints. Instead, an entire array of bottles greeted his eyes. He silently inspected them, the men not foolish enough to interupt him or explain.

Over a hundred bottles. They'd sampled muscles, digestive tissues, lungs, kidneys, heart, spleen...no skin and no nervous tissue, no. But far more than they could have done in the short time they had each night while the vampire was unconcious.

They had hated the vampire, regularly referred to the beast as an "it" or a "subject". Each of them had been well appraised of the vampire's actions prior to his capture, and early on, before he'd gotten the monster under control, Alucard had managed to kill one of them. Not on purpose, no, but as the beast had struggled, he'd knocked a man over and sheer bad luck had connected the man's head with the corner of the table. They'd hated the vampire since.

He'd also chosen men that had demonstrated a talent for vivisection, after all, and vivisectionists did not often waste ether on mere animals. They had plenty of experience extracting tissues and studying a living, protesting beast, and would have considered a struggling vampire to be only a minor annoyance.

They hadn't explained to him what they had actually done, no. Each word so far had been a lie; yes, they'd fed the vampire, yes, they'd locked him up safely, yes, they'd followed his directions, taken the samples in the assigned order.

And they'd dissected an awake, aware vampire. He shuddered, not so much at the thought of what Dracula had experienced, as what it could mean. He'd been harsh with the beast, but fair. It hated him, feared him, but was not desperate, only miserable. As long as it did what he commanded, it would not suffer unduly. Escape and retaliation, though unlikely, were always a possibility and he was not so foolish as to abuse the creature more than needed to keep it obedient.

Now...now...if it were gone, recovering, it could return for vengeance. His mind decorated his lawn with spikes, the men impaled upon them, and he paled as he realized just how terrible that retaliation could be. No matter how he loathed the monster, he'd always treated it with a minimum of respect for its intelligence and capabilities. They hadn't. They'd cut Dracula up while awake and aware, and starved him to boot. They would never admit to it, so he didn't ask. Instead, he turned to them, collecting his thoughts before asking something different. If the vampire had been shrieking, the rest of his staff would have heard.

"How did you keep him from screaming?" His eyes met theirs, watching protestations of innocence die on their lips.

"I, we, that is..." Nervous, the man licked his lips. "The voice box, you see. We, well...crushed it. From the sides. No noise, that way. He could breath, swallow, but..." the voice died on the shocked stare Abraham gave him, and then rushed to finish. "no noise!" He blurted that out, and Abraham found himself leaning on the cold shining metal table. He closed his eyes, opening them to watch his blurry face reflect back. He'd expected them to say they had gagged the beast, or tied its mouth shut.

They'd crushed its throat, reduced it to a mute beast, then cavalierly dissected it each night.

He knew exactly why the beast had escaped. Without them locking the doors or chaining it, he knew how. Leaving them behind, he went vaguely at the wall where he'd expected to see a vampire, huddled and frightened and miserable, but intact, and present.

Damn them all. He wanted to beat them to a bloody pulp for their stupidity and mindless cruelty.

He settled for sending them away, and without payment. They'd had a comfortable income here, his venture funded by the Crown, partly as science and partly as medical research and partly with the goal of creating superior soldiers or using the vampire as a weapon. Well, they'd be forfeiting the entire month's pay, the bloody bastards.

They were wise enough, at least, to leave without protesting. Had they done so, he might well have lost control and beaten them to bloody pulps. 


	3. Discovery

-three reviews, three chapters... The next one will be the last, though. :) -

Abraham ran his hands over his face, expression haggard and drawn. His vampire was in the house, and not yet deceased. He'd forbidden the vampire to leave the house, but had at first thought that someone might have removed the creature. Dracula couldn't leave of his own free will, but that didn't mean that he couldn't have been taken out in a trunk or a dustbin. Once the fools who'd lost his vampire had been permanently ejected from his home, he'd gone immediately to his work chamber and began to trace the vampire. The diagram on the floor, formed of his blood and Dracula's, would provide information.

He'd learned two very important facts. The salt he'd strewn on the bloody diagram on had lit up; the vampire was still under his control, and the spell was still active. Abraham's immediate thought was that the vampire was no longer on his property, and the spell he'd bound the creature with was trying to force it to return. His brow furrowed; if that was the case, the beast had to be in utter agony. The spell didn't differentiate between "would not" and "could not".

The second fact was that the vampire was close. The spell was non-directional, only indicating proximity, but the brightness showed the vampire nearby. Either in the house or on the grounds immediately outside it. He scowled at the glowing crystals, their steady bright blue glow reassuring and frustrating in equal measure. Where could the beast have hidden? He debated releasing the vampire from some of the bindings, knowing Dracula had to be suffering immensely, but decided against it. He'd already been subjected to this for more than a fortnight. A few more hours wouldn't make any difference.

Gathering all the staff of his house and stable, they started their search in the basement. He was wise enough to lock off his work chamber, the lab, and the vampire's cell, but all the musty storerooms and coal bins had to be checked, each half-rotten crate and old tarp inspected.

He'd thought they'd find the vampire huddled behind some discarded bit of furniture...and the very thorough search of the basement yielded nothing.

Frustrated, he moved the search outside. It was a proper British home for a wealthy doctor, with properly-shaped shrubs and proper gardens and a few proper topiaries and even a small proper rose arbor. No vampire. He'd wondered if the vampire had somehow ended up in the pond. Water would disable the creature and prevent it from responding. It couldn't have changed into a wolf, bat, or mist; he'd disabled those powers immediately. If he couldn't find the beast, they'd drain the pond and cut down an old, dead, hollow tree as well. It had to be somewhere, and there was an entire house sans basement to check first.

Every room was inspected. Shelves were emptied, cubbyholes and nooks and cabinets peered into. Accesses to plumbing were opened, lights shone into every possible hiding place. Room by room, floor by floor...and nothing. Nothing at all. The dumbwaiters were pulled up, and Abraham realized the vampire might be hiding in the shafts. A quick check up and down showed the passages clear from pulley to pulley, nothing but dust and cobwebs. Two full days of over a dozen people inspecting every possible hiding place, and no vampire. Each cobwebbed crate and trunk in the attic had been opened, each corner checked, and nothing.

With a grudging respect, he admitted the vampire had hidden itself quite exceptionally well. Not that he could blame it.

Day three had a small army of chimneysweeps inspecting the chimneys. With the installation of the furnace by the previous owner, many of them had been blocked off. He was sending them up chimney as often as down them, and it was a full day before he realized that there was no chance the vampire had found any places there. He also realized he had far more chimneys, blocked off into dead ends, than he'd realized. The fireplaces were long gone, but the chimneys remained. Some had been used to route the furnace ducts, but many were just sealed off. Every accessible chimney had been checked, each rooftop opening inspected, and nothing.

But that did make him realize that the furnace itself was a possibility. He could have kicked himself. It was not in use, would not be in use for months more. Trotting to the basement, he pulled open the great metal door to the burning chamber...and found dust. Undisturbed dust. He'd truly expected to see an ash-coated vampire curled into the corner, but...nothing.

However, the large pipes which extended throughout the house, the ducts, were a possibility. The chimney to the furnace itself had been shown to be empty, but there were ducts. Pleased with his realization, he strode to the basement corridor containing the main furnace duct, planning to remove a vent cover...to find that it had none. It was a solid, featureless metal duct without a single opening from where it joined the furnace to where it ended at the back wall. The ducts that branched off into the individual rooms had vents, much too small for a vampire to squeeze through, especially an injured vampire.

And Dracula hadn't entered the ductwork from the furnace. However, if the creature had made it out of the basement and up to the living floors of the house...yes. He could easily have removed one of the big grates and gotten into the ducts.

The chimneysweeps were sent out to check the ducts, scrambling into them from various entrances, floor by floor. Abraham was relieved that at least the duct layout was simple, not the labyrinth of the chimneys, and it was less than an hour before the boys reported that they were done, each shaft, each duct, inspected and declared clear, barring the ones in the attic that were simply too small to enter.

On the off chance that some of the attic ductwork might have larger sections, he entered the attics with two of the boys. As each vent cover was removed, with the aid of a mirror and candles, he looked down each duct. The boys had been quite correct, these were too small. The smallest of the sweeps, with a lot of effort and assistance, might have squeezed through one, but not a full-sized vampire.

Still, it was possible that one might be larger than the others, made of leftover duct or to heat a larger room, and so they kept looking. His next step would be to take down the great dead oak and see if the hollow center concealed a vampire, and then to cut open the dam and drain the fishpond. Both were major activities, and he'd rather rule out the last of the ductwork first.

And then he smelled it. With the noise and activity of the attic search, the crates and boxes opened and moved about, he hadn't noticed. But with only two boys in a quiet attic... It smelled somewhat like a dead mouse, but only somewhat. Drier, acrid...it clung to the back of his throat, with the coppery tang of blood mixed through. Vampires had so little scent; what they had was due more to their clothes, their coffins, their surroundings, and not produced by themselves. But vampiric blood had an odor, unpleasant, one that instinct responded to with hairs on the neck prickling.

He was smelling vampiric blood. More, too; the odor of decay was unmistakeable. But Dracula was there.

It wasn't long before they'd found the obstruction in the ducts, the curled fingers and yellowed nails barely visible, the rest of the vampire lost in the darkness. Unwilling to show the vampire to the boys, he'd thanked them, paid them well, and sent them down to the kitchen for a treat. His housekeeper would see that they returned home safely.

In the meantime, he had a vampire to extract. Ordering the beast to come to him had not even resulted in a twitch of the fingers; he wondered briefly it if were a true corpse and not a vampire in the darkness. No, not with those claws. No human child, lost in a game of hide and seek, perhaps, rested under that floor.

Preparation, this would involve preparation. Extracting the beast would involve pulling up the floorboards, cutting into the ductwork. And he'd better feed Dracula, too. This would not be a quick removal, and would take tools capable of sheering through the metal of the duct. Moving back downstairs, he sent servants to the carpentry shops for metal shears, others to bring hammers and prybars and saws from his own sheds. He'd need to feed the beast, too. The cook confirmed she could only get a small bit of blood, nowhere near the quantity he thought Dracula would need.

He hated feeding the beast human blood, but it was a necessity. The vampire had to be badly damaged, starved indeed for it to have entered that duct. He still didn't know how it had managed that feat, but Dracula must have been truly desperate. Which reminded him...

A few careful modifications to the diagram, and power no longer flowed to the portions of the spellwork that caused pain. Dracula still had to obey, but while he was disabled and unable to do so, he would not suffer unduly.

Not long after, he was handing a shilling to each employee that let him draw blood, harvesting the red plasma into a bottle. He'd sworn to keep it on a diet of animal blood, and the vampire had managed on it...but short of killing one of his horses, he simply didn't have animal blood of any quantity available immediately. Dracula had begged and pleaded for human blood, and he suspected it likely would restore the monster more than animal blood. And the vampire needed all the restoration it could get. Almost a month of no food, the damage from the surgeries and dissections... Grumbling quietly to himself as he extracted the needle and pressed cotton against the tiny hole, he accepted the human blood as a temporary and necessary evil. 


	4. Conclusion

The sun had set, the vampire had been pulled out onto the attic floor, and by all rights it should be showing some signs of awareness, of movement. Even placing a bottle of blood by its head drew no response. Frowning, Abraham sat back on his heels, inspecting his vampire in more detail.

He'd been badly abused, there was no doubt of that. Dessicated as Dracula was, the skin had split along what were very obviously incisions, and the internal organs showed visible damage through those narrow fissures. The bones of the hands were broken; he'd wanted cartilage samples and a nail, yes, but there had been no cause to mangle the fingers. Then again, perhap the vampire had injured the hands himself while hiding. Stretched out naked under the bright light of the lanterns, the damage and starvation were visible. There were great slices in his wrists, and a scalpel coated with flakes of dried black vampiric blood, resting in a small pool of it. The clever beast had hidden himself away, then made certain he could not be forced to return. He'd crammed himself into the duct, and then bled out what little blood he'd had left. He was completely drained, then dried in the hot attic for most of a month.

Dracula looked like nothing so much as a skeleton wrapped in old leather.

Interesting, though. He hadn't known that a vampire could be rendered so deeply unconcious that not even fresh blood would draw it back to awareness. Although dried out and sliced, the vampire seemed otherwise intact, all fingers and toes accounted for and no major visible injuries. Peeling back the dry cheeks with a grotesque rustle showed that he was missing no teeth, a glance down his body showed that all other organs, from eyes to nose to genital, were still intact. Abraham intended to teeth and perhaps an eye for study later, depending on how well the vampire regenerated the other missing tissues, but for now, those were some of the few tissues that the men had not sampled.

Intact, only starved and sliced. There was no reason to think the vampire wouldn't heal, he merely had to get some blood into it. Gripping the hair, he lifted the head with one hand and prepared to pour blood into the slack mouth with the other. The blood instead splashed down the cheek as the hair ripped out with a sound like tearing paper, leaving Abraham with a handful of sparse, spider-web thin gray strands. He cursed quietly at the mess as the vampire's head thudded against the floorboard, before reaching down to lift it for a second attempt.

More carefully, hand supporting the back of the beast's head, he tried again. This time, the blood went into the beast, draining slowly down the throat. Lifting the vampire up a bit higher, he poured more. No swallowing, but gravity was doing the job for the creature. Before long, the vampire was swallowing on his own, though the eyes remained closed and body unresponsive.

Bottles emptied, Abraham sat back and observed the changes. The skin immediately closed over the wounds, though the rough edges of the dried muscles moved about visibly under in. He'd known the vampire healed from the outside in, suspecting it to be a trait that reduced blood loss, but wondered how long it would take to heal those old injuries. There was dust and grit in them too; would the vampire's body force that out?

The minutes ticked by, the vampire looking less and less dessicated, and the eyes cracked open to stare vaguely at the wall. Dracula was still starved down to skin and bones, but the wounds at least had healed. Damn those men, if Dracula had managed to thwart his restrictions at all, he'd have torn into them in retaliation. Abraham gave the beast a few more minutes to recover before rising to loom over him.

"Get up." Expecting to see some response, Abraham frowned. Dracula hadn't even blinked, still staring blindly at the bottom of the roof. There was blood on the lips, too; no tongue had appeared to clean it. No motion at all. "Get up. Now." No sign he'd been heard. Was the vampire still partially asleep, dazed and dozing after all? A nudge with the foot, then a solid kick to the ribs. He hadn't thought it anywhere near hard enough to do more than bruise, but a warning crack told him that the beast was far more fragile than he'd expected.

And still no response. He'd have to carry the damned beast downstairs after all.

Wrapping Dracula loosely in an old curtain, he tossed the vampire over his shoulder, scooped up the bottles and a lantern, and headed down the stairs. He'd send someone back for the other lanterns later. Within moments, the grizzled head of Abraham and motionless yellow lump of curtain disappeared down the stairs, leaving the two lanterns alone in the empty attic, shining through the gaping hole that had nearly become a grave.

x x x x x

He'd chained the vampire up, leaving it to recuperate the rest of the night. Tired himself, it had been after lunch before he returned to the basement to retrieve the beast.

Dracula lay in exactly the same pose as he'd been left, arms twisted up and locked in the manacle, body contorted on the floor. It couldn't be comfortable; had the beast truly slept the entire night away? It was midday, he should be asleep now...but in the many hours of darkness, he'd never moved in the slightest.

Disturbed at the evidence of such severe damage, Abraham unlocked the beast, lifting him to drop him unceremoniously on the steel table under the bright surgical lights. No incisions today, not until the vampire had filled out a bit more, had blood it could spare, but he wished to inspect it anyways, record the damage. Superficially, the vampire looked fine. Tugging on the fingers and toes revealed no shifting broken bones, the joints all moved in the acceptable directions, palpations on the abdomen showed organs in familiar places, fine pink lines the only sign that the vampire had ever been wounded at all. Those would be gone after the next meal, unless the length of time the vampire had been wounded caused a scar to form.

Could a vampire scar? Dracula's skin was entirely unblemished, all the damages of his time as a human washed away in his unholy condition. Nothing they'd done so far had created any lasting marks, so Abraham simply noted the number and positions of the marks to compare them to later observations. With a grunt, he picked the vampire up and moved to the scale.

Damnation. The vampire weighed barely sixty pounds. Abraham had fed him approximately seven pounds of blood...fifty pounds. The beast had weighed a mere fifty pounds when extracted. Considering the tiny space he'd been wedged in, he couldn't have weighed much more when he entered it. Starved, indeed. He'd need that blood he'd ordered!

Observations done, the vampire was summarily hauled back to its chamber and locked away until evening.

x x x x x x

Still no response. Blood smeared across its lower lip, and instead of licking it off and searching for more, the vampire sat like a puppet with its strings cut, oblivious to the bloody smear. The eyes were not open, not closed, sitting at half-mast and staring vaguely at nothing. Frustrated, Abraham pulled it into the surgery again, using the straps to fasten it to the table, then spinning the handle to tilt the table and vampire nearly upright. Dracula did no more than sag against the restraints, only those straps keeping him from sliding to the floor. Abraham forced a long-necked funnel into the vampire's mouth and partway down the throat, and began the slow process of filling him with blood.

He'd hoped the vampire would be awake and able to feed himself, but at least he could sit comfortably on the stool as the sticky pig's blood drained out of the bottles and into the beast.

x x x x x

Ninety pounds. Good. It had taken more than a bucket of blood, but the vampire had filled out again, still thin but not skeletal. Abraham had every intention of keeping him weak and underfed, but at ninety pounds, the vampire had been functional. Slightly lighter than a human, bones and muscles less dense, unnecessary digestive organs greatly reduced due to the restricted diet, ninety pounds was an acceptable mass. Now, he simply needed the beast to wake up!

Slapping the cheeks lightly, he shouted to it. "Dracula. Open your eyes. DRACULA." The light slaps become painful smacks, stopping when a trickle of darker, almost-black vampiric blood oozed from the lips. Pulling back on the mouth showed cuts inside the cheek from where the skin had been sliced on the sharp teeth. As Abraham watched, they healed. Slowly, slower than before he'd left for his trip...but in a few minutes, gone entirely.

Perhaps the goad of pain would be necessary after all? Leaving the vampire strapped upright, he moved to his work chambers. Restoring the spell was far easier than the original creation, simply a bit of his blood and the reconnection of a few sigils, and the pain-inducing aspect was again active.

"Dracula. Open your eyes." Gloating, he waited...and...nothing. Dracula was not crying or twisting in pain, simply staring vaguely ahead with the same half-lidded, empty eyes.

The body was healed, the mind...apparently not. Abraham's eyes widened briefly in shock. They hadn't lobotomized the creature, had they? No, of course not...he'd been intelligent enough to make his escape, after all. Once again, the vampire was dumped unceremoniously on the floor of the cell, chains locked about his limbs and neck, and left. Abraham was going to give him the rest of the night to continue to recover, hoping and expecting that by the following night, he'd have his vampire back and functioning.

In the meantime, there were quite a few samples to inspect, starting with the digestive system and its organs.

x x x x x x

Still nothing. Four days since he'd pulled the vampire from its tomb in the attic, and while the body was healed, the vampire's mind was entirely absent. Even pain had no effect on the beast; Abraham had conducted a brief exploratory surgery to examine its insides for remaining damage from before, to find no damage, and no response. Dracula should have been screaming in agony, but there was not even a flinch as the muscles were peeled back, the organs prodded and lifted and inspected. Pulling the muscles and skin back into position, Abraham moved the table upright and fed the vampire again. Before the cup of blood was even empty, the abdomen was back to a smooth, white, pristine, entirely unmarred existence. Only the smears of blood showed that anything untowards had occurred.

No, this wasn't working. Food was not sufficient. The vampire had begged for its coffin, had been told it would be allowed the coffin, eventually, once Abraham was satisfied with its behavior. Cowed though the beast was, it still pleaded with him every few days, desperate for the confines of its coffin, begging in an entirely pitiable and satisfying way. After four days of his vampire being nothing but an oversized doll, Abraham decided to let it have its coffin.

There was no response as the vampire's body thudded against the thin padding, not a twitch as Abraham dropped the two heavy bags of earth in with it. With a mental shrug, he dropped the lid on the beast, locking the door behind him as he left, mind already turning towards the slides he planned to create from the tissues, away from the annoyance of having to provide his prisoner with the coffin after all.

The next night, the vampire woke. Abraham grinned as the eyes blinked up at him, focusing, then waiting. "Come with me." Without grace or any facial expression, the vampire clambered out of his coffin, shuffling awkwardly behind him. Dracula moved to sit quietly on the steel table that he'd been subjected to horrors on, doing exactly as Abraham told him, lifting this arm, holding that item, opening his mouth for an inspection, obedient but...slow. The movements, instead of the fluid speed of an angry predator, were clumsy, unbalanced, sluggish. And silent, no protestations at entering the surgery at all, no begging for more blood, nothing.

The hair was brighter, the face had lost its lined, exhausted appearance, but the vampire was an automaton. Wondering, Abraham slapped the vampire without warning, a vicious and powerful impact, cracking loudly in the room and sending the head flying to the side, a brief flush of red appearing and then fading.

Alucard sat silently, a few trickles of black-streaked blood oozing out to drip silently onto his chest, responding not at all to the unexpected assault.

Abraham couldn't help the victorious smile that lifted his lips. Two months of daily research, the isolation, the hunger, the denial of the coffin, and the vampire had still resisted, still fought back, still struggled to reach his freedom. At least once a night, the vampire would jerk suddenly in pain as Abraham's spell blocked an attempt to attack, to resist, to snarl and threaten.

And the beast was finally broken. He could understand, could obey, but there was no longer any resistance. The blazing stubborn spirit was extinguished, buried...the vampire no longer dangerous. A grin, as he realized the possibilities. One more test, for the muteness might be mere damage...

"Call me "Master," vampire." The vampire was slow to respond, but it was not hesitation, merely the result of the damage and the lethargy, and he did respond. A quiet, low, response, barely audible, but there, and intensely gratifying.

"Master."

Abraham's staff noted his happy mood for the next week, a wonderful change from the tension and anger of the previous week. He'd always been a good man to work for, and now he was practically ebulllient.

He had dozens of samples to study, and a tamed and broken vampire that he could now rebuild into exactly what he wanted.

He had great plans for the beast, and it no longer had the will to resist him. Humming happily, he went down for the night's research. It was time to remove the eye; he'd study it, then replace it. Vampires had much better night vision than a human, and he wished to find out why. Entering the chamber, he found the vampire standing, waiting for him, as he'd ordered. He still kept the chain about its neck, though long enough now for the vampire to travel about the room if it desired. It didn't desire, though. It no longer seemed to desire anything. Once they were done working, it went to its coffin, and stayed there until Abraham collected it the following day.

Ordering it to lie on the table, Abraham didn't even both strapping the beast down. He merely picked up the dish for the specimen, and turned to the vampire.

"Give me your eye."

With no hesitation, a hand reached up, the vampire obediently moving to pluck his own eye out. A bare moment before the nails reached the staring, glistening orb, the pistol cracked. The hand flopped limply, the eyes staring blindly upwards, blood pooling from under the head.

The vampire would be unconcious for a few hours, and by then, the eye would be back in his head. Within minutes, the muscles were sliced, the nerve cut, and the extracted eyeball rolled about in the dish, glistening under the bright gaslights. Abraham found himself humming to himself, a delighted and smug smile stretching his mouth.

He'd never actually force the vampire to mutilate itself. A silver bullet rendered it immediately unconcious, there was no call to make the beast suffer unnecessarily.

But it was so very nice to know that he could, and the vampire would.

And with the happy, rollicking tune filling the room with his hum, he pinned the eye in place and began to slice away at the cornea.

x x x x x x

Done. It's much darker than the other stories; there's no bond of need or friendship between them in this story. Alucard is broken after more than two weeks trapped, starved, and in agony in the attic. Abraham isn't cruelly abusive, but there is no empathy at all for the vampire. He'll go on to control the vampire, send him out on hunts, and eventually Alucard will become the vengeful, destructive creature of Hellsing. All the internal anger and rage directed out at the creatures he hunts...and not exactly the most sane person, either! 


End file.
